1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a global positioning system (GPS) and a method for implementing the same and, more particularly, to a GPS with a mask read-only memory (ROM) and a method for implementing the GPS. The present invention also relates to a control integrated circuit (IC) of the GPS with the mask ROM and a method for manufacturing the control IC.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The GPS has been widely used in various applications such as the car navigation system. Please refer to FIG. 1, which is a block diagram of a conventional GPS. The GPS 100 comprises a microprocessor 110, a GPS radio-frequency (RF) processing circuit 120, an audio signal processing unit 130, a flash memory 140, a synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) 150, an I/O interface 160 and a display module 170. The GPS RF processing circuit 120 receives an RF signal from a satellite via an antenna 125, transforms the RF signal into a base-band signal and then transmits the base-band signal to the microprocessor 110. Typically, the flash memory 140 is a NAND-type flash memory for storing a program code and map data. Before the program code is executed, the program code is stored in the SDRAM 150 that has a higher accessing speed. The microprocessor 110 executes the program code temporally stored in the SDRAM 150, processes the base-band signal from the GPS RF processing circuit 120 and refers to the map data stored in the flash memory 140 so as to achieve positioning. The positioning information generated by the microprocessor 110 is broadcasted by a speaker 135 after being decoded and amplified by the audio signal processing unit 130 or displayed on the display module 170. Moreover, the positioning information can also be transmitted to other electronic appliances such as a computer by way of the I/O interface 160 coupled to the microprocessor 110. Typical I/O interface specifications include the universal serial bus (USB), and the universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART).
Generally, the map data occupies a large memory space and thus the GPS 100 requires a large-capacity flash memory 140, which leads to an increase in cost.